EPQ is quite easy, you could easily finish it in 2 days, say start Friday night and end on Sunday evening, doing an all-nighter perhaps and pulling off an A*.
The point of doing it is to show university that you are independent thinker and can research on your own, among other things. Some people, who aim for lower unis (which often offers ucas tarrif points offers, and not grades subject wise) do it to make sure they get enough points. I had a lot of people like that in my class. I was doing it for AQA baccalaureate which is another reason to do it, and is compulsory for it. Also if you didn't do too much work experience, haven't done a lot of independent work/practice which you could write about in personal statement it would be good for you to do it since it would show you have independent interest in the subject, if you do your epq related to the course you want to study of course.
In my first year I did 4 as-levels and epq as well, alongside some work for aqa baccalaureate hours. And since you will finish maths in first year, it will be like dropping a subject in 2nd year, you will only have to do 3 since you will be done with maths, unless you will want a resit, but hopefully you won't. And EPQ isn't for 2 years, not even a year, maximum, at least in my college it was for half a year, but if you can finish it in a week then you can be done in a week. So if you finish it in september or october it won't affect your preparation for exams. Oh.. I forgot that January exams were scraped, well you have some time then, imo its not too much of a workload, if you get it done when you have time in the beginning of the year
If you wonder, I did maths, further maths, chemistry and computing and epq in my first year. I finished college now, wil lbe going to uni in September.